Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough

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Title page of Volume 1 of the Antiquities of Mexico

Edward King, Viscount Kingsborough (born November 16, 1795 in Cork , † February 27, 1837 in Dublin ) was a British nobleman and early Americanist .

Life

Edward King was the eldest son of George King, 3rd Earl of Kingston (1771-1839). As his marriage apparent from 1799 he carried the courtesy title Viscount Kingsborough . In the years 1818 to 1826 he was on the side of the Whigs MP for County Cork in the British House of Commons .

King supported the then popular thesis that the Lost Tribes of Israel were the founders of American cultures. For this reason he was one of the first to collect indigenous manuscripts and travelogues at sites of the former high cultures.

In 1831 he published the first volume of his work Antiquities of Mexico , which contained a collection of copies of various Mesoamerican codices , including the first complete publication of the Codex Dresdensis .

As a result of debts he had taken on for his father, he was imprisoned in the Sheriffs' Prison in Dublin in 1837 and died there of typhus . Since he died before his father, it was not he, but his younger brother Robert who inherited the title of Earl of Kingston when he died in 1839 .

The following volumes 2 and 3 of his Antiquities of Mexico were published posthumously. This work served as inspiration to later Mayan researchers and represents one of the first steps in the study of Mayan writing . The Codex Tepetlaoztoc was named Codex Kingsborough in his honor .

Publications

  • Antiquities of Mexico: comprising fac-similes of ancient Mexican paintings and hieroglyphics, preserved in the royal libraries of Paris, Berlin and Dresden, in the Imperial library of Vienna, in the Vatican library; in the Borgian museum at Rome; in the library of the Institute at Bologna; and in the Bodleian library at Oxford. Together with the Monuments of New Spain, by M. Dupaix: with their respective scales of measurement and accompanying descriptions. The whole illustrated by many valuable inedited manuscripts, by Augustine Aglio . 9 volumes, London 1831–1848 ( digitized ).

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personal data
SURNAME King, Edward, Viscount Kingsborough
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Edward King
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British nobleman and early Americanist
DATE OF BIRTH November 16, 1795
PLACE OF BIRTH Cork
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1837
Place of death Dublin